1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing system having an image processing function and, more particularly, to an image processing system which recognizes the presence of word areas in an image (document) and lines, and detects spaces between words, positions of characters and the like and further which can perform the rewriting, editing, retrieval, or the like of documents.
2. DESCRIPTION OF THE PRIOR ART
Image processing systems, for example, word processors have at present various processing capabilities and are indispensable to produce and edit documents. A keyboard, an OCR or the like is mainly used as means for inputting a document. In general, input characters are converted to code data corresponding to the internal codes (ASCII, EBCDIC, JI, etc.) of the system used and thereafter they are subjected to processing such as storage, rewriting, retrieval, editing, or the like.
Documents ordinarily contain a table, a graph, a picture, a photograph, or the like as well as characters. A word processor for producing and editing documents by synthesizing those graphic data and sentences has been also considered. In this case, characters, tables, graphs, pictures, photographs, or the like are stored as different data formats, respectively. For example, characters are stored as character codes; tables and graphs are stored as data suitable to describe them; pictures are stored as graphic data or images., photographs are stored as images; and the like.
Apart from the production of new documents, in the case where a great amount of documents which have already been typed are inputted and used as a data base, particularly, it takes an extremely long time and is troublesome to input primary information by typing on a keyboard.
On the other hand, as other office machines having a function to input or output documents, a copying machine or a facsimile apparatus is known. Although copying machines can input information at a high speed, they merely output the inputted documents as they are or output the documents after they were enlarged or reduced, but the copying machines do not have the processing capability to process the inputted documents such as a word processing capability, or the function to store or retrieve the documents.